“Hey!” I called out and banged on the wall with my fist, but there was no way they were going to hear me over the grind of metal boring into concrete. It seemed to go on for ages. As soon as there was a vague reprieve, it started up again.
I had to do something. I could either phone Raymond, the unpleasant and slightly mad eighty-nine-year-old caretaker, or I could deal with it myself.
When I heard a giant crash, as if a mirror had just been shattered, my mind was made up. Pissed off and tired, I stormed out the front door and marched down the hallway. This new neighbor wasn’t off to a good start. What were they up too?A home make-over in the a.m.?I reached number six and knocked.
There were stacks of cardboard boxes outside and it was obvious that they were still in the process of moving in. Still, that was no excuse. I must have knocked about ten times, and with each knock my patience grew thinner. I finally gave up and tried the handle and the door opened. I took one small step inside . . .
“Hello!” I said. I figured I’d better call out before barging inside—unlike some people, I wasn’t rude. But when after the fifth call I’d still had no reply, I felt well within my rights to investigate. I walked straight down a long corridor to the spare bedroom—the penthouses were all laid out the same—the drilling and banging were getting louder with each step. When I reached the room, the door was slightly ajar, and again I thought the polite thing to do would be to knock once more. So I did. And again. And again.
Fuck this.“I’m coming in,” I said. And I did. Then I saw him standing on a ladder in his underwear—
“YOU!” I pointed and stammered.
He turned and looked at me, shirtless, sweaty and wearing a smile. “Well, hello, Sera. What a coincidence. I was just thinking about you.”
9. That Picture Is Skew . . .
Several extremely puzzling thoughts were running through my mind as I stood there staring at him—okay, the lower half of him. I mean, he was wearing the exact same underwear from my dream, how was that even possible?—I closed my eyes a few times and opened them again to make sure he was really there. I pinched my cheeks too, but he was still there. This wasn’t a dream.
But why was he here? And why the hell was he doing home improvements in his underwear? And in the middle of the night? I didn’t even know where to begin my line of questioning, so I said the first thing that came to mind.
“That picture is skew,” I said, pointing at the framed picture on the wall behind him.
Ben climbed down the ladder slowly and walked right up to me. He turned to face the wall and looked. “I believe you’re right. Thanks.”
He climbed back up the ladder and readjusted the picture—I’m not even going to even try and explain what Ben looks like when he climbs a ladder in his underwear. There are just no words in any dictionary, in any modern or ancient or alien language that would do the spectacle justice. Trust me on this.
Once he’d straightened the picture, he turned, sat on the top step, crossed his legs and looked at me as if he was totally unperturbed. As if he was somehow completely separate from this reality and was on his own weird wavelength. It was as if nothing about the current situation was even vaguely bizarre to him. I opened my mouth a few times to try and say something, but I just ended up staring at him as he pulled a cigarette out from behind his ear, lit it, took a drag and let the smoke tumble seductively out his mouth. I suddenly pictured this moment being captured by a photographer in black and white and hung in some French gallery for a whole bunch of pretentious, vaping hipsters to admire and appreciate as modern art.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” I finally managed. “It’s bad for you.” I said this even though I was totally transfixed by it. It took the whole bad boy thing he had going on to an entirely different level.
“So they say,” he said as he took the cigarette from his mouth and put it out on the top step of the ladder and stepped back down towards me.
“It’s winter,” I added. “You should put clothes on, you could get a cold”—another fricking stupid thing to say.
“Yes, Mom,” he said as he took another step closer to me, prowling like a wild animal about to pounce. I had a momentary lapse in sanity when my eyes met his, my mouth opened and a little breathy sound came out.
Snap out of it!
“Okay. Stop. Stop right there. Stop that walking or whatever it is that you’re doing immediately.” I pointed at him.
He stopped and smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Ahhhhh,” I gasped out loud and slapped my hands over my mouth in total shock—he’d said that in my dream too. Did he possess some kind of sexual, supernatural superpower that made him able to manipulate women’s dreams?
“Stay back,” I said, fully aware that I looked like a crazed woman backing away from a criminal, but if I didn’t keep him at bay, I was almost certain he would have me bent over that ladder—and I probably wouldn’t object.
Ben burst out laughing and held his arms in the air like he was under arrest—images of handcuffs flashed through my mind.
“So how long did it take you to find me?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“To find me? Have you been running around the city knocking on doors looking for me all night?” He flashed me an iceberg-melting smile.
“What! NO! You think I’ve been looking for you?” Ben was definitely the most arrogant, cocky and self-assured person I’d ever met—God, it was hot.And so fucking annoying too. “I can assure you I haven’t.”
“Joking again, Sera.”
